Theme Parks

According to internal documents dating various refurbishments around the Walt Disney World, we can currently expect Walt Disney World’s first in-park Starbucks to open at the Magic Kingdom theme park on May 18, 2012.

The restaurant will be located at the Main Street Bakery which is scheduled for closure between January 6, 2013 and May 17, indicating it will emerge as a Starbucks-branded location on May 18, 2013. As with its west coast counterpart, the Main Street, USA location Starbucks will remain themed to its location with cast members donning costumes that lend themselves to the theme park’s land.

Via its official Facebook page, Disney PhotoPass has announced the debut of Attractions+, a service that complements its recently introduced PhotoPass+ service. With the new Attractions+ card, available at both the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts, guests can receive unlimited downloads of attraction photos for a two week period for just $44.95.

Guests have up to 24 hours after riding a photo-enabled attraction to attach it to their Attractions+ card, at which point it can be used online at the DisneyPhotoPass.com website as if it were any other PhotoPass card.

Participating attractions — where Attractions+ can also be purchased — at this time include:

There’s a definite odd-man-out in this trio of mentions, but as they all came up in one of our routine product reviews, all have the same release date and should all be on most everyone’s wish list this holiday season, here they are all presented as one beautiful-sounding package.

First up is a recent Disney Parks release, ‘The Circle Sessions: The Music of Carthay Circle,’ which was released as a CD not all that long ago exclusively at Disney California Adventure. Already heralded as a must have, the digital album features twelve Disney classics with an all-new jazzy spin as heard at the Carthay Circle Restaurant on Buena Vista Street at the Disneyland Resort theme park.

Safety, courtesy, show and efficiency; these are the four guiding principles (or keys) that Disney Parks and Resorts ingrains into its ‘cast members’ that not only highlight how to conduct themselves in their ‘roles,’ at the parks, but stress their order of importance. Therefore, safety is the primary concern of the company and its employees.

But what if a cast member were to run ‘afoul’ of the organization and its management and cite concerns regarding safety? And especially where management is effectively swapping the importance of safety for the sake of efficiency? Worse yet, what if that cast member claims retaliation for their whistle-blowing and says they were wrongfully terminated as a result?

We first reported that Walt Disney World was seeking circus acts for its Storybook Circus portion of the New Fantasyland Expansion a few months ago. At the time, it was noted that solo clown acts were not being sought out, which many misconstrued as meaning clowns were not going to be an element in the Magic Kingdom’s expansion, which officially opens this Thursday, December 6.

Disney Parks and ABC Television have provided us with several images from taping that took place this past weekend and last month at both Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and the Disneyland Resort for its 29th annual Christmas Day Parade. Full details on the parade including performances, floats and air times can be found in our previous report from earlier today.

Photos in our gallery below feature appearances and performances by hosts Mario Lopez, Nick Cannon and Maria Menounos, Lady Antebellum, TobyMac, Ross Lynch, Backstreet Boys and the cast of Broadway’s ‘Newsies,’ plus many Disney character favorites including Jake from ‘Jake and the Never Land Pirates’ and Sofia the First.

With just under a week before the official grand opening of the New Fantasyland expansion the Magic Kingdom, the Walt Disney World Resort has shared some interesting facts and statistics about the expansion as well as Fantasyland at Disneyland theme parks around the globe.

A blooming bounty of festival firsts will welcome Disney guests to the 20th Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival presented by HGTV March 6-May 19, 2013 at Walt Disney World Resort. First, the news:

Epcot chefs will cook up first-time festival food and beverage fun, with special cooking stations offering exclusive-to-the-festival bites along the park’s World Showcase promenade.

A new circus-like “Land of Oz Play Area,” based on the Disney fantastical film adventure Oz: The Great and Powerful to be released in March 2013, will debut a kaleidoscope of interactive fun.